For as much as I like to talk, I have never caught myself doing it to myself. Since moving out to New York, I have noticed that a good number of people out here talk to themselves. Maybe its a city thing. The buildings and the traffic and the people get jumbled inside of them and they begin verbalizing thoughts that a person who lives in, say, Nebraska, wouldn't even fathom - no less say out loud.
In the Russian laundromat near my apartment I sat reading and watching my underwear spin, when an overweight Hispanic woman sat down by the door with a cup of hot coffee in her hands. She began sputtering of what sounded like a list of colors or types of vegetables or bad 80's songs. I don't know what exactly her lists were doing out there in the air for all of us to know, but I do think it calmed her to do it, so that made it okay with me. The only time she stopped was to watch me put my hair up. After she finished her laundry and walked out, I felt sad, or empty somehow, in need of more lists.
A few days ago, on the way into the city, there was an old African American man seated a few seats across the way from me. He had been babbling on without a partner and these days I've come to just assume that people have a Bluetooth on the ear I can't see, so I let it be. Then I remembered that I was on the subway and cell phones don't work down there (thank god). This man was speaking to himself. He had a bunch of black plastic bags around him so I figured he was homeless and went back to reading my book. When he stood up and began a dialogue about the number 74, I knew I wasn't going to get any reading done on this trip. So I sat back and enjoyed the show. This man was a performer. He should have really pursued a career in play acting, because his timing, his body language, his facial expressions were phenomenal. The best part of it was the fact that he seemed to be having a heated argument with someone who wasn't there. So this was no ordinary list making monologue. It was exactly as I had thought it was before: like a phone conversation you witness where you can't hear the person on the other line. He seemed to be getting pretty upset with whoever it was in his head that he was talking to, so he sat down to calm himself and catch his breath. He picked up a smallish black bag from his pile and I got nervous that inside of it was a bottle of Fleischmann's or something that might harm me, but he gingerly pulled the bag halfway open to reveal a smiling plastic doll. The doll was a comical looking man in a black robe with his arms outstretched and his smile almost as wide as his arms. The man began talking to the doll, and I became more comfortable with the situation because now he had something to talk at besides the passing blackness outside the moving train. Suddenly, he turned in his seat to face me and the woman sitting next to me and made the doll face us. He asked, "Have either of you ever seen this before?" We shook our heads no and he looked at us and the doll in disbelief. Then he proceeded to walk around the entire car asking everyone if they had seen the doll before. Nobody gave him the answer that he sought, but he continued to ask the question loudly, now to the car as a whole. I wanted to see what would happen if I would say yes, but my stop came up and I had to get off the train. Filled with disappointment that I would probably never see this man again, I also laughed aloud to myself as I walked up the stairs to the street. People passing me probably thought to themselves, "Oh, another crazy one coming from the underground." But I didn't care. The city must be creeping inside of me.
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